


staying power

by viverella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - College/University, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Didn't Know They Were Dating, Flashbacks, Happy Ending, I tried to make osamu less dumb I swear it just wasn't happening, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining, What else is new, idiots to lovers except it's really just one of them who's an idiot, osamu is a bit dense and dumb, suna is very very patient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29831322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: Suna keeps moving away, one way or another. Osamu has spent his whole life chasing him, not knowing if he’ll ever catch up.
Relationships: Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 23
Kudos: 119
Collections: Billy’s reading list, SunaOsa





	staying power

**Author's Note:**

> I had planned to have this posted like. a week ago, but alas Real Life™ decided to rear it's ugly head so this ended up taking me about twice as long as I'd anticipated to edit, but anyway
> 
> hello and welcome to the fic where I had to stop every other paragraph and go wait. am I making osamu too stupid?? is it even realistic that all this would happen and he still wouldn't get it?? but anything is possible when you have little to no access to your own emotional state of mind, much less anyone else's, I suppose. pour one out for suna in this one. somehow he has the patience of a saint.
> 
> hope u enjoy!!

It starts with an offhand comment. Osamu’s in his final year of college, just less than a year shy of graduating and being launched out into the world to try to be a real adult, and Suna says it like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t suddenly change everything.

“I think I’m going to sign with the EJP Raijin after we graduate.”

They’re sitting on the ratty old couch that they inherited from the former captain of the university’s volleyball team a few years ago when he took pity on the two of them and their barren apartment partway through their first year. Suna’s leaning back against one armrest with his long legs stretched across Osamu’s lap and reading the fifth volume of some manga he picked up just the other day, even though Osamu knows for a fact that Suna has a huge project due in two days, and Osamu’s got his laptop balanced precariously on Suna’s shins, trying to get through some readings for a class he’s got in an hour. It’s quiet, and Suna says it without any preamble or pretense, sounding almost bored like he could be talking about anything, the weather maybe, or what groceries they need to get this week. Osamu whips his head around to stare at Suna, startled. 

“Oh.”

Suna looks at Osamu over the top of his book, eyebrows raised. “Please try to hide your excitement,” he says flatly, unimpressed. 

“No, I—” Osamu starts and then pauses, tries to regain his footing. “I mean, I just didn’t know that things were that far along already, but that’s amazing. Congrats.”

It’s the truth, really, but for some reason, it all feels just slightly off, a bitter taste lingering on the tip of his tongue.

Suna hums and turns his gaze back to the manga, satisfied. “Thanks,” he says.

Suna’s attention rolls easily off of Osamu and back to the book in his hands, capricious and temperamental, but Osamu can’t stop staring, an odd sensation sitting at the back of his throat. He blinks, twice, hard, like he’s trying to get something out of his eye, like he’s trying to wake up from a dream, and then winces and looks away, feeling guilty and uneasy. It’s not like it’s terribly unexpected, really, that Suna’s going to go pro. He’s a star player on the university’s team and Osamu knows that scouts have been coming by lately to try to get their pick of the lot, that Suna’s been talking to them, and Suna himself has expressed interest in it several times, all the way back in high school, even. But it’s one thing to know it in theory and another to have it thrown in his face that this is real, that his best friend is planning on actually following through with this, that one way or another this year will mark the end of something. 

“They’re based in, uh…” Osamu’s voice trails off, and he knows the answer because he remembers during their third year of high school how Suna and Atsumu used to pore over all the news about the top ranked teams, bickering over which teams were better, which had more interesting players, already looking towards a future Osamu wouldn’t have and didn’t want, never mind that Suna already had plans for the next four years where Atsumu was just going to dive in head-first without looking back. Osamu knows the answer, even as the words get stuck on the roof of his mouth, because he remembers noting the locations of the teams they seemed to talk about the most—the Adlers in Tokyo, the Black Jackals in Osaka, the Raijin in—

“Hiroshima, yeah,” Suna says absently, easily picking up the train of thought without looking up. He turns a page in the thick volume he’s reading and the corner of his mouth turns up, sly and playful. “I’ll finally get to escape Kansai once and for all.”

It’s a joke, and Osamu knows it’s a joke, and these should all be good things, that professional teams are interested in Suna, that Suna will get this thing he’s wanted for so many years after all this hard work. But Osamu just looks at him, at the way his eyes are narrowed just a little bit in concentration as he reads, the lazy sweep of his bangs framing his face, the idle _tap-tap-tap_ of a long finger along the spine of the book, and Osamu just thinks, _why am I not happier?_ Thinks, _why does this feel so hard?_ Thinks, _what kind of good-for-nothing best friend am I, anyway?_  
  


* * *

  
Osamu is six years old when he finds Suna asleep under a big tree in the field behind his house. It’s a hot summer and the air conditioning is out that day and Atsumu is taking a nap in Osamu’s bottom bunk because it’s darker and cooler, having announced that he was going to sleep through all the hottest hours of the day and only come out at night, when it’s not so miserable. Osamu’s sitting by their open window, willing a breeze to blow through the almost stiflingly still air, and that’s when he spots it, a messy mop of black hair from under a big tree not too far away. He’s out the door to investigate before he can think about why he’s doing it, propelled forward by a childish sort of curiosity and restlessness from just sitting around in the sweltering heat all day.

What Osamu remembers most clearly, many, many years later, is how small Suna seems in that moment. Suna will eventually outpace him, outgrow him, but Suna at six is tiny and compact, slender wrists and knobby knees, curled up in a neat little ball at the base of the tree. Osamu stares at him in a kind of wonder, squatting down next to him, and it doesn’t occur to him that this is probably a little bit weird until Suna stirs a little, woken up, maybe, by Osamu’s shadow falling over him. He blinks sleepily, rubbing at his eyes as he sits up, and he stares blankly at Osamu for a long moment before frowning, eyes narrowing. There’s a stray leaf caught in Suna’s hair and a little crease pressed into his cheek from the grass and Osamu thinks to himself _I have to know him. I have to._

“Who are you?” Suna asks, and even his voice is small, a low murmur over the whir of cicadas in the air.

“I’m Osamu,” Osamu says around a wide grin. There’s something sitting in his chest like excitement, because for the longest time, it’s just been him and Atsumu. “Do you live here? There aren’t lotsa kids in the neighborhood.”

Suna shakes his head. “I’m visiting my grandparents,” he says. 

A swoop of something akin to disappointment sinks into Osamu’s stomach but he keeps smiling anyways. “Where do they live?” he asks, hoping that the answer is something like _not too far_ or maybe even _just down the block_.

Suna stares at him for a moment and then sits up more properly, turning his head this way and that to look around. His expression doesn’t change much, but Osamu thinks he can see a vague thread of panic settling in around his sleepy eyes, his skinny shoulders. Osamu leans in a little closer to peer at Suna curiously. 

“Are you lost?” Osamu asks.

Suna snaps his gaze to Osamu’s like he’s surprised, and Osamu notices that Suna’s eyes are almost green, bright and soft in the hot summer sun. It’s a pretty color, he decides. 

“I’ll help you get home,” Osamu offers, pushing himself up and holding out a hand for Suna to take. He’s not sure why, exactly, he does it, just like he’s not sure why he came out here in the first place, just like he’s not sure why it feels so important that he make an impression, somehow. Suna looks at Osamu’s hand skeptically like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, and Osamu just smiles, says, “I know this neighborhood pretty well. I’m sure we’ll be able to find your home.”

Something flickers across Suna’s face, too fast to really process, but it has the effect of softening Suna’s features, just a little, as he reaches out to take Osamu’s hand almost eagerly. His skin is cool to the touch as his fingers thread through Osamu’s, and he holds on like he means it, like there’s some kind of unspoken trust that’s been forged between the two of them, all at once, just like that. 

(Kids are easy that way, Osamu thinks later, years down the line. He sometimes wonders if it would’ve been the same if he and Suna had met any later.)

“I’m Rintarou,” Suna says quietly, his voice almost a whisper in Osamu’s ear. “Suna Rintarou.”

It’s a simple thing, but as Osamu looks at him, at the way the corners of his mouth are turned up, just barely, at the openness that sits in his gentle gaze, Osamu thinks to himself that this feels like the beginning of something. They walk like that, hand in hand, through the neighborhood, Osamu pausing every now and again to point at a street sign or a house or a car parked on the side of the road and ask if any of it seems familiar, Suna never once letting go of his hand. Osamu isn’t sure how long they roam around for, but it’s long enough for the sun to start dipping low in the sky by the time they find Suna’s grandparents’ house (a soft _ah_ from Osamu’s side and he turns to see Suna’s expression brighten like parting clouds). Suna’s grandmother comes rushing out to meet them, fretting over Suna and chiding him for wandering off too far. Suna, for his part, looks unbothered. 

“It’s okay,” he says, his voice more solid and sure than Osamu’s heard all day. “Osamu found me.”

Suna turns to offer a small smile to Osamu, a kind of crooked quirk of his lips, and he squeezes Osamu’s hand once before finally letting go and letting himself be ushered inside. Osamu finds himself smiling too, something almost giddy and buoyant filling his chest, and he turns and runs all the way home. When he gets back, everything is exactly as it was—his mother reading a book on the couch, his father in the kitchen fussing over what to make for dinner, Atsumu asleep in his bed. No one’s even realized he’s been gone, but Osamu can’t shake the feeling that there’s something about the world that’s undeniably different.  
  


* * *

  
“I’m home,” Osamu calls out on reflex when he returns to his apartment from class for the day, kicking his shoes off by the door and dropping his backpack on the ground next to them. It’s starting to get hot and humid out, spring right on the cusp of summer, but the apartment is mercifully cool, air conditioning whirring somewhere softly in the background. There’s still a couple hours till Suna usually comes back from volleyball practice, and Osamu’s musing over what he should make for dinner and if he needs to make a run to get more eggs when he’s startled by the sound of Suna’s low, even voice, drifting out from the apartment proper.

“Welcome home.”

Osamu feels his heart lurch in his chest in a way that he tells himself is just from surprise, and when he wanders into the living room, he’s greeted by the sight of Suna’s feet hooked over the backrest of the couch, Suna himself sprawled across the couch in some completely nonsensical manner, back to the couch cushions, head dangling upside down over the edge of the seat as he taps away at something on his phone. It looks like a precarious way to be, Suna half in danger of either dropping his phone on his face or slipping the rest of the way to the ground head-first, and Osamu feels a warm swell in his chest that comes out as a laugh and flicks Suna’s ankle. Suna kicks half-heartedly at Osamu but otherwise doesn’t move, still focused on his phone. 

“Do you even know how to sit like a normal person?” Osamu asks, more to ask than anything else. He lets his hand fall, lets it settle absently on the bare strip of skin peeking out from between Suna’s pants and his socks. 

Suna peers up at Osamu from behind his phone, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile that from this angle looks more catlike than usual. “It’s against my nature,” he says.

Osamu laughs softly. It’s been three weeks since Suna brought up going pro. He hasn’t talked about it since and Osamu hasn’t asked, and sometimes, if he closes his eyes and tries hard enough, he can almost believe that it was all a dream, that in his real life, Suna made a promise to stay, that Suna won’t go where Osamu can’t follow him. But mostly, Osamu just feels stupid and petty and selfish, so he tries not to think about it at all. 

“Thought you had practice today,” Osamu says. There’s a stray thread from where the hem of Suna’s pants is starting to come apart a little, and Osamu fights the urge to yank on it, settling for fiddling idly with it instead. 

“We have a match tomorrow, so Coach decided to end practice early,” Suna says, shrugging and swinging his legs around to sit up properly on the couch, resting an elbow on the backrest and cradling his chin in his palm. He looks up at Osamu expectantly. “So, what do you want to do with all this unexpected free time?”

A lazy smile pulls at the corner of his mouth and his long eyelashes cast shadows across his sharp cheekbones in the late afternoon light. He’s dressed casually in a pair of joggers and a t-shirt, looking relaxed and comfortable, and at the far side of the living room, Osamu can see through the half-open door to Suna’s bedroom various odds and ends strewn haphazardly across the floor—shorts and a new pair of sneakers, an old volleyball Osamu knows Suna brought with him from high school and a single, stray kneepad that Suna will probably never end up wearing during a match. On the floor by the door, preventing it from shutting properly, is a fluffy red blanket that Suna likes to wear as a cape when he gets cold, that he’d had draped over his shoulders when he’d knocked on Osamu’s bedroom door the night before because he hadn’t gotten more than a few hours’ worth of sleep each night for days, and Osamu had let Suna crawl into his bed like he always does when Suna’s insomnia gets particularly bad, had let Suna curl up against his side, head on Osamu’s chest and hair tickling at Osamu’s chin. He’d woken up with a stiff neck, but Suna looked better rested than he had all week, so Osamu couldn’t really find it in himself to be mad about it. 

Osamu lets out a breath and reaches out to smooth down where Suna’s hair has gotten ruffled from lying half-hanging off the couch. 

“You hungry?” Osamu asks, even though he already grabbed a snack on his way back to the apartment.

Suna snorts. “Are you?” he asks, teasing, but he’s already pushing himself up to vault over the back of the couch and wander towards the door. 

Sometimes, Osamu thinks, asking Suna for things, even little things, feels like a sort of futile endeavor, because Osamu mostly only gets half-answers back, but Suna almost always goes along with things when Osamu asks if he wants to do something—go out to eat, see a movie, accompany him to a party—and Osamu supposes that maybe that’ll have to be good enough. Suna doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to and if he really means it, he’ll say it then, when he’s good and ready, so Osamu’s always operated under the assumption that if Suna goes and does something, he must want to, and it’s been a pretty okay strategy, considering. But as Suna slips on his shoes and grabs his keys, turning halfway around by the door to raise his eyebrows at Osamu ( _are you coming or not?_ ), Osamu thinks that the natural converse to that is that whatever Suna doesn’t do, he must not want, that acts of omission say just as much as acts of commission. And there are a lot of things, Osamu think sometimes, knows without knowing how or why, that Suna leaves undone.  
  


* * *

  
Osamu runs down the block on the first day of summer break, twelve years old and traveling the path he knows by heart by now, two lefts and then a right and it’s the fourth house on the block, the one with the big plum tree hanging over the fence, and as he runs he dreams of summer. He thinks of sticky popsicles and freckled, sun-kissed shoulders and Suna in a bright red yukuta at the festival they went to last year, sharing dango and cotton candy and shaved ice that stained their tongues purple. Osamu’s got this wide, goofy grin on his face by the time he makes it to Suna’s grandparents’ house, heart hammering in his chest, but when Suna’s grandmother opens the door, the look on her face is unusually apologetic, and Osamu feels his stomach drop. 

“I’m so sorry, Osamu-kun,” she says, and she sounds sincere, but it doesn’t really do anything to alleviate the way Osamu suddenly feels so heavy. “Rin joined a club when he started middle school, and it’s going to keep him busy during the summer.”

“Oh,” Osamu says, trying not to look too put out by it. It makes sense, he thinks, and it’s not like he doesn’t have his own club activities eating up precious weeks of summer break too, but it makes him irrationally annoyed for a reason he can’t place. 

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” he asks, still trying to hang onto something, anything. 

Suna’s grandmother lets out a soft sigh. “I’m not sure,” she says. “He didn’t say.”

Osamu nods and thanks her before slinking away from the house he knows almost as well as his own, shoving his hands in his pockets and wondering why, despite the sun beating down on his shoulders, he suddenly feels so cold. When he gets home, alone, Atsumu asks him if he still wants to play water guns, and Osamu looks at the three brightly colored plastic pistols sitting on the back porch—neon yellow for Atsumu and pale blue for Osamu and cheery red for Suna—and feels heavy and sad. 

“No,” Osamu says. 

Atsumu sprays him with a water gun anyways.

Later, when Osamu thinks about it, he tries to figure out why this feels like such a turning point, why in the path of his life, he can count this summer as one of the big speedbumps that knocks him just a little off course. He doesn’t quite figure it out till it’s his thirteenth birthday and he’s thinking about how the last time he saw Suna, Suna had given him a keychain with two tiny foxes that still hangs off the zipper of Osamu’s school bag (an early birthday present, Suna had said, since he wouldn’t be in town for the real thing). Osamu fiddles with the keychain and for a moment, considers removing it, but then worries a little about misplacing it, about being unable to find it again if and when he wants to put it back, and that’s when it dawns on him.

Suna’s the first friend that Osamu has who isn’t Atsumu’s too, not in the same way, not even as they had spent all their childhood summers together scraping their knees and finding little treasures and exploring all the nooks and crannies of the neighborhood. Suna and Atsumu would probably even admit that they’re friends too, if pressed hard enough, but Suna was always Osamu’s friend first. 

Suna’s also the first thing that Osamu loses that Atsumu doesn’t. Atsumu is noticeably disappointed when he hears the news that Suna won’t be coming around anymore, but Osamu can’t help thinking that it’s not the same. Because Atsumu didn’t stumble upon Suna that first year and bring him all the way home. Because Atsumu never got that small, sweet smile that Osamu wants to believe was always reserved for him and him alone ( _it’s okay, Osamu found me_ ).

Suna doesn’t come back the next summer either or the summer after that. Osamu doesn’t know why he doesn’t try harder to reach out to Suna, ask his grandmother for his email, maybe, but he doesn’t, and Osamu never hears a single word from him. It’s an odd time, Osamu remembers. It’s the first time in his life he becomes acutely aware that people _can_ leave, just like that, like water running through his fingers, and he thinks sometimes that the feeling still haunts him to this day, even though it’s not like that anymore, even though everything’s so different now. Because sometimes, these days, Osamu looks at Suna when he’s stumbling out of his bedroom for morning classes with his hair in complete disarray or hanging laundry out to dry or standing barefoot on their kitchen counter instead of using a stool or chair to change a lightbulb, and Osamu thinks, all at once, _don’t leave me_. Thinks, _not again_. Thinks, _not you too_.  
  


* * *

  
Their last summer of college, their last summer break for the rest of their lives, is almost unbearably hot. Osamu can’t walk more than a block or two before his shirt is soaked through with sweat, and more than once considers skipping everything, classes and meetings and work, just to stay a little longer in their cool, air-conditioned apartment. He doesn’t, mostly, but it’s a tempting fantasy. 

“I’m home,” Suna calls out from the doorway. 

Osamu can hear him kick off his shoes and drop his bag to the floor, almost certainly with no regard for how messy he leaves the _genkan_. Suna’s always been a little like that, whirls in with little pomp or circumstance, does as he pleases, and then goes, leaving things just a little more chaotic than they were before.

“Welcome home,” Osamu responds absently, clicking through another real estate listing for a shop space downtown. His mother had called earlier in the day, fretting about jobs and his future and Osamu hadn’t known how to tell her that despite how much she worried about the risk, he’d decided a long time ago that he was going to strike out on his own. 

Suna collapses on top of him from behind the couch, letting his arms dangle across Osamu’s chest and resting his chin on Osamu’s shoulder. He’s heavier than he used to be, back in high school, finally started to put on the kind of muscle expected of a top tier athlete, but Osamu wonders sometimes why he doesn’t feel any steadier. 

“What’re you doing?” Suna asks.

Suna’s hair tickles Osamu ear, and he’s peering at Osamu’s laptop with mild interest, his voice skating in a breath over Osamu’s collarbones. 

Osamu shrugs. “Just looking at places for my shop after we graduate,” he says, trying to make it seem like it’s nothing, like he doesn’t sometimes wake up in a panic wondering if he made the right choice with his life and if this is all going to be worth it. 

Suna hums. “This one’s cute,” he says, reaching out to tap Osamu’s laptop screen with a long, slender finger. The tip of it is wrapped up in athletic tape like Suna jammed his finger or tore a nail during practice. 

Osamu swats at Suna’s hand. “Quit touching my screen,” he gripes and then jerks his head back to look at Suna, who’s still dressed from practice, cheeks a little flushed from the heat and hair in disarray like he’s been jumping all afternoon, spiking drills, maybe, or blocking. Osamu’s always thought that it’s a good look on him, the way his expression grows sharp and bright as he plays, but Osamu pulls a face and shoves at Suna. “Ew, you’re all sweaty from practice. Get off of me.”

Suna laughs as he straightens up. “Relax,” he says, “It’s just sweat. No need to be such a princess about it.”

Osamu narrows his eyes at Suna, some kind of witty retort primed on the tip of his tongue, he’s sure, but then Suna’s peeling off his shirt as he makes his way towards his bedroom, complaining about how hot it’s getting, and all thoughts running through Osamu’s mind screech to a halt. Suna’s gotten a lot stronger since high school, his shoulders broader, and Osamu knows this, somewhere at the back of his mind, but it’s like he forgets every time, like some kind of object permanence he never learned. Suna stretches his arms over his head, pale skin pulled taught over muscle, a couple strips of brightly colored athletic tape stuck over his shoulder and down past his shoulder blade like the X at the end of a treasure map, and Osamu feels the ache in his bones settle somewhere low in his stomach. He forces himself to look away, and when he hears Suna’s bedroom door swing shut and the shower start running in his bathroom, Osamu lets out a long breath. 

It had been an easy decision, at the time, moving in with Suna after high school. They were going to be attending the same university, and for the first time in Osamu’s life, Atsumu would be living full time in a completely different city, and there had been something about the mere idea of living alone that had frightened Osamu in a way he couldn’t explain. So when Suna looked at him from where he was lying on the floor next to Osamu during the final team sleepover of high school and asked if he wanted to live together, Osamu had immediately said yes, of course, like it was the obvious answer. And in the spring, when they’d moved into their tiny but cozy two-bedroom apartment with all of their things and Atsumu complaining about having to help them carry everything (especially, he’d griped, since neither of _them_ bothered to help _him_ move when he’d moved to Osaka to start his volleyball career, never mind that Atsumu could actually afford to hire professional movers), it had felt like this was always the way it was supposed to be. Never mind that Osamu looks at Suna sometimes and feels like he’s about to burst out of his skin if he doesn’t do something about this. Never mind that Osamu’s heart hasn’t had a moment’s peace since that day. 

(He wonders, sometimes, if he’s always been this masochistic, or whether it’s just that somewhere along the line, Suna started to feel like someone irreplaceable.)

Suna reemerges from his room some minutes later, freshly showered and dripping water everywhere. His bangs are pushed back from his face in an effortlessly elegant sweep away from his face and damp hair sticks to the back of his neck, and Suna flops down on the couch and shoves Osamu’s laptop out of the way so he can sprawl across Osamu’s lap. Osamu does his level best to look unimpressed and Suna grins. He’s still not wearing a shirt.

“Hey, help me with something,” Suna says, and then hands Osamu a roll of athletic tape. He turns around so that his back is facing Osamu and gestures vaguely to his shoulder. “I’m under strict orders to keep this taped up for the rest of the week.”

A few stray droplets of water that have dripped down from his hair cling to his skin. Along the ridge of his shoulder, there’s a smattering of tiny freckles that almost perfectly align with the constellation Perseus. Perseus, who slayed so many monsters thought to be insurmountable. Perseus, who got to grow old, happy and in love, for all his troubles. Osamu frowns. 

“You okay?” Osamu asks as he sets to work on Suna’s shoulder with careful fingers. 

Suna hums. “Yeah, just overworked myself this week probably,” he says. He lifts his other shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. 

Osamu laughs. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?” he teases Suna. “What happened to the kid who always got in trouble for cutting corners?”

Suna laughs then too, the bright sound filling the quiet, empty space of their apartment. When Osamu finishes taping up his shoulder, Suna lays back to rest his head on Osamu’s lap. His hair is still damp, but his eyes are soft and warm, and Osamu opts not to say anything about any of it. 

“We all have to grow up eventually, Osamu,” Suna says, something cryptic and secretive about his tone, like there’s something else there that Osamu needs to search for. “We can’t just sit around waiting for things to happen to us forever. Nothing would ever get done.”

Osamu makes a thoughtful sound at the back of his throat. There are times in his life when he wonders if he and Suna are even speaking the same language, with the way that Suna often tucks away tiny truths amid half-lies and clever metaphors and bluster. Suna seems to want something from him, each and every time looking at him with piercing but expectant eyes, and Osamu’s never known if he’s ever quite followed through, if it’s enough that Osamu’s always been there for all the big and little things, if it’s enough that Osamu just keeps showing up, day after day. Osamu doesn’t do mind games like Suna does, never has, because he’s always believed more in the doing of things than saying them, and he wonders sometimes, _have I done enough?_ Wonders, _will I ever do enough?_. Wonders, _would I even know when to stop if I ever got there?_

But Suna’s always been made more of questions than answers, and so it’s all Osamu can do to wonder and wonder and wonder. All this time, all these years, and Osamu’s still no closer to figuring it out.  
  


* * *

  
Atsumu’s about half an hour late when he collapses into a chair at the corner table Osamu and Suna have claimed at their favorite coffee shop. It’s a quiet, cozy place, enough of a buzz to provide soothing white noise for days spent slaving away on papers or problem sets or studying for tests, but not so busy to be filled with distractions or awkward run-ins with people they don’t want to see. Suna likes the coffee selection they have on hand and Osamu likes the rotating stock of pastries they set out every day, and they’ve spent countless days just like this over the past few years, Suna idly reading a book with a cracked spine, rocking his chair back onto its hind legs, tempting fate, and Osamu tucked in at the corner where the wall meets the big window looking out onto the street. This is how Atsumu finds them when he arrives in town in early October to spend the weekend with Osamu, never quite admitting to the squishy, sentimental fact that he comes by every year around now because it’s their birthday, and neither of them have ever spent their birthday alone. Atsumu heaves a sigh as he falls into the empty chair, and Osamu to give him an unimpressed look. 

“You’re late,” Osamu says, even though it’s almost always like this, except for maybe when it really counts. 

“I got caught up with practice and missed the earlier train, okay?” Atsumu says, a slight whine sneaking into his voice. “Bokkun wanted to work on some stuff. You should count yourself lucky that I’m only half an hour late. It could’ve been a lot worse.”

And it’s not that Osamu doesn’t believe him, because as far as excuses go, it’s a pretty good one and probably at least partly true, though Atsumu’s always been every bit as obsessive about volleyball as all the people he complains about these days, but Osamu makes a face at Atsumu anyways, just to be difficult about it. Across the table from him, Suna hasn’t quite looked away from the book he’s been reading, but it’s been a minute since he last turned a page and the corner of his mouth is curved up just a tick like he’s trying to seem less amused by all of this than he is. Osamu kicks him under the table. Suna draws his long legs in and finally looks up to narrow his eyes at Osamu. Just inside his peripheral vision, Osamu can see Atsumu roll his eyes but chooses to ignore it. 

Across the room, one of the baristas calls Suna’s name, and Suna lets the front legs of his chair fall back down on the ground with a low _thunk_. He shoves a crumpled receipt in his book to mark his place and gets up to go pick up his order, his chair sliding back with a dull screech against the floor as he stands. Osamu can feel Atsumu’s eyes on him as Suna walks away and out of earshot, but Osamu looks down at his phone instead of at his brother. His phone lights up with an unread message from Ginjima, casting a bar across his lockscreen photo, the one of him and Suna at a festival from last summer, Suna in a bright red yukuta again like some kind of ghost from Osamu’s past that won’t stop haunting him. In the picture, Osamu’s putting a fox mask on Suna’s head just so, and Suna’s smiling, one of those rare, warm smiles that he almost never lets slip out, the one that Osamu remembers from when they were kids and Suna hadn’t learned yet how to be so sharp and evasive. It’s a good picture, a good memory, but sometimes Osamu looks at it and his whole body hurts, remembering how the colors from the fireworks looked reflecting in Suna’s eyes, remembering how Suna slipped his hand into Osamu’s like he does sometimes in the winter to stay warm as they wove their way through the crowd to find the candied apples that Osamu wanted. It had been chilly that evening, the hot day turning easily into brisk night as the sun dropped down past the horizon, and Suna’s fingers were cool against his own, and Osamu had found himself wondering what Suna was more afraid of, the cold or losing him. 

Next to him, Atsumu heaves another sigh. “D’you know what I want for my birthday?” he says after a moment. 

Osamu flips his phone over onto its face and leans back in his seat. He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything, waiting for whatever inane idea he knows Atsumu will throw at him regardless of what he does or says. Atsumu leans an elbow on the table and narrows his eyes at Osamu. 

“I want you,” Atsumu says, jabbing a finger in Osamu’s face, “To suck it up and finally make a move on the guy you’ve been in love with since we were kids so I can stop feeling like I’m going to claw my eyeballs out every time I look at the two of you.”

Osamu lets out a huff of a breath and swats Atsumu’s hand away, trying to ignore the way Atsumu’s comment makes something painful bloom in his chest, like pressing on an old bruise. 

“It’s not like that,” Osamu says, and he’s repeated it so many times that he’s almost started to believe it. 

“The hell it isn’t!” Atsumu shouts, and then, a little quieter after Osamu smacks his arm, “Look, what’re you so afraid of, anyway? That he’s gonna ditch you the moment you confess? You know that’s not gonna happen. Even _he’s_ not that much of an asshole.”

Osamu grits his teeth to stop himself from snapping. “It’s _not_ like that,” he repeats, a little sharper this time, hoping without any kind of real hope that Atsumu will take a hint and drop the subject. 

Atsumu gives Osamu an exasperated look. “How long are you gonna keep pretending that?” he asks, the annoyance from earlier giving way, just a little bit, to something that sounds suspiciously like concern. “’Cause a guy can’t wait around for forever, y’know. One of these days, Suna’s gonna run out of patience, and then you really will lose him.”

Atsumu looks over his shoulder, looks pointedly at where Suna’s lingering by the counter, chatting with the barista about something, laughing at something she says. She’s a classmate of Suna’s, Osamu’s pretty sure, and she works the afternoon shift fairly often, so they run into her almost every week, and she’s tall and pretty. Atsumu looks back at Osamu and raises an eyebrow at him, and Osamu groans and scrubs his hands over his face. Now _he_ feels a little like _he’s_ going to claw his own eyeballs out. 

“I keep telling you, it’s really not like that,” Osamu says, and he can hear the desperation sneaking into his voice but can’t do anything to stop it. Atsumu knows almost everything there is to know about Osamu, but there are some things, little, secret things, that Atsumu doesn’t know, can’t know, things that exist between Osamu and Suna alone, these tiny memories that Osamu keeps coming back to, because they all point to the same unavoidable truth. “Suna’s not waiting for anything.” He draws in a slow, even breath. “I’m not either. We’re good. We’re fine. There’s nothing to fix.”

Atsumu rolls his eyes and makes a sort of vague gesture in Osamu’s general direction. “This is fine?” he says, disbelief dripping from every word. “I wish you could see yourself right now. You look fucking _miserable_. This is _not_ fine.” 

“I’m not miserable!” Osamu exclaims, suddenly irritated. 

“Oh, really?” Atsumu says, voice rising again to match Osamu’s tone. “You gonna spend the _next_ twenty-odd years of your life moping around and pining like an idiot when you could be better than fine? When you could be happy? God, you’re so stupid in love with Suna and you can’t even admit it. What’re you gonna do when he finds someone else, huh? Someone who won’t leave him hanging for half his fucking life?”

As Atsumu rants, Osamu sees Suna over Atsumu’s shoulder wrapping up whatever conversation he’s been having with the barista, sees Suna start to wander back over to their little corner table, and Osamu feels a kind of sickening panic rise high in his chest. 

“Atsumu,” Osamu snaps, “Shut the fuck up, _right now_.” 

“ _No!_ ” Atsumu says, indignant. “You need to hear this. One of these days, Suna’s gonna—”

Osamu lunges forwards and slaps his hands over Atsumu’s mouth, clamping down with more force than is strictly necessary, and glares at him, face hot. 

“ _Shut the fuck up_ ,” Osamu hisses, low and angry. “You _don’t_ know what you’re talking about.”

Atsumu makes an irked noise, muffled by Osamu’s hands, and tries to wiggle free. Osamu refuses to let him until he’s certain that Atsumu won’t go and say something stupid for the entire world, and more importantly Suna, to hear. They’re still glaring at each other, locked in a silent standoff, when Suna arrives back at their table and raises his eyebrows at them. 

“Do I want to know?” Suna asks, looking back and forth between the two of them.

Osamu finally tears his gaze away from Atsumu to smile a bright, if almost certainly slightly guilty, smile at Suna, hoping that it looks anywhere near normal, like this is just some other random fight, like Atsumu isn’t digging his claws in exactly where Osamu doesn’t want, especially not here, especially not now. Osamu’s heart races a mile a minute in his chest, unable to ease until Suna rolls his eyes, shaking his head and sitting back down. Crisis averted. 

Suna places a small plate down on the table and slides it towards Osamu. On it is a perfect square of a lemon bar, lightly dusted in powdered sugar, Osamu’s favorite. Osamu stares at it for a long moment before looking back up at Suna, eyes wide. 

Suna shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. “Yuna-chan was just putting them out when I got to the counter,” he says easily, a little absently, already turning his attention back to his book. “Thought you might want one.”

Osamu finds his mouth tilting up into a small smile without his meaning to, even though he’s trying so hard to hold onto his anger at Atsumu, even though Suna’s not even looking at him anymore. Next to him, Atsumu makes an annoyed, whining sound, muffled by Osamu’s hands still clasped tightly over his mouth. Osamu narrows his eyes at Atsumu, a warning ( _don’t you dare speak a word of this_ ), and Atsumu rolls his eyes, a begrudging concession ( _I’m right and we both know it, but fine_ ). Osamu lets Atsumu go and leans back in his seat again, slowly, cautiously. Atsumu pulls a face and rubs at his cheeks. 

“ _Ow_ ,” Atsumu whines emphatically. He crosses his arms, pouting a little. “Happy birthday to you too.”

Osamu gives Atsumu a scornful sort of smile. The lemon bar, when he eats it, is more tart than he remembers it being.  
  


* * *

  
“Osamu?” 

It’s always so simple, the things that end up changing everything. Just _Osamu?_ , quietly, once, on his very first day of high school, and Osamu’s whole world suddenly screeches to a halt. The voice is soft, softer than Osamu remembers, curling in around his name like smoke, but Suna’s eyes when Osamu whips his head around to stare at him are sharper than the last summer he was here, three years ago, the corner of his mouth turned up into a smile that’s maybe a step more distant, if not less kind. 

_Rin_ is what Osamu remembers calling him growing up, _Rin, Rin, Rin_ , shouted as he ran down the block in a rush to get to Suna’s house, around the tail end of a laugh as he pointed at fireworks lighting up the night sky, whispered under the cover of darkness and a light summer blanket as they traded secrets long after they were supposed to be asleep. _Rin_ is who he remembers, this little kid with cold hands and a warm smile, but what he ends up breathing out, startled and off-balance is, “Suna.”

Suna’s eyes narrow at him, just a tick, and Osamu gets the distinct impression that he’s being scrutinized. For whatever reason, it makes his stomach flip, a creeping sense of déjà vu sneaking up on him, this feeling that this is the beginning of something, again, that for one reason or another he has to make this count.

“Hey,” Suna says, casual and easy, like is just another summer he’ll spend flitting in and out of Osamu’s life, like this isn’t Osamu’s worlds colliding and being knocked completely off axis. Suna tilts his head to one side. “You changed your hair.”

Osamu blinks, stunned. 

“Yeah,” he says, more on instinct than anything else. “Over winter break.” And then finally, finally, his mind catches up to where his body is, and he asks, incredulous, “What are you doing here?”

Suna smirks a little. “I go to school here,” he says, and Osamu can still picture how Suna would have said it when they were kids ( _dummy_ tacked on to the end, pinching Osamu’s cheek and laughing when Osamu pouted).

Osamu wonders if this is all some kind of crazy dream he’s going to wake up from at any moment, but the seconds tick by, and Suna’s still sitting there in front of him, resting his elbow on his desk now and propping his chin up in his palm, looking at him with a sort of amusement in his eyes that Osamu can’t quite say for certain isn’t Suna laughing at him. 

“But—” Osamu sputters. “ _How?_ ”

( _And where the hell have you been for the past three years, anyways?_ Osamu almost adds but then stops before he can say it, something about it feeling too squishy and vulnerable to touch, thinking no, no, that’s not something Suna ever needs to know.)

“They wanted me to play volleyball here,” Suna says, sounding almost bored by the thought. “It was the best offer I got, so.” He shrugs. “I live with my grandparents full time now.”

A laugh bubbles up Osamu’s throat before he can stop it, something warm and dizzying filling his chest. “You play volleyball,” he says, completely floored at how small the world feels sometimes. 

Suna raises an eyebrow at him, but he still looks, Osamu thinks, mostly amused, so he tries not to fixate on it too much.

“Did you get hit in the head one too many times?” Suna asks, sharper than Osamu remembers from their childhood, and he’s still smirking, like there’s something in him that’s learned to bare its teeth first and ask questions later. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

Suna at fifteen is willowy and tall, so much taller than Osamu remembers, taller, maybe, than Osamu, and his smiles are harder to come by, more precious, more secretive, and Osamu doesn’t know anymore if the boy sitting in front of him is anything like the kid he grew up with, who once used the last of his pocket change to buy himself melon bread even though he wasn’t hungry just so Osamu wouldn’t have to eat alone. Osamu’s not the type of person who’s ever really believed in fate or destiny, has never believed that things happen for a reason. Things just happen, or you make things happen, or you don’t, and you figure out the reasons later. But he has no idea how to explain this, Suna sitting in _this_ classroom, at _this_ school, to play on _this_ volleyball team, the side of his face illuminated by the pale morning light, looking at Osamu with his chin cradled in the palm of his hand like he never left, like he was always supposed to end up here. Suna at fifteen is not the boy Osamu remembers and Osamu knows he’s not going anywhere for the foreseeable future, but all the same, Osamu finds himself thinking _stay_.  
  


* * *

  
Osamu’s walking across campus to grab something for lunch before his afternoon classes, headphones in and blissfully unaware of the world around him, when he’s startled out of his thoughts by cold hands grabbing him around the waist and slipping under his jacket and shirt to press against his warm skin. He yelps and jumps and whirls around to come face to face with Suna, who’s laughing like he just pulled off the world’s greatest prank, like this isn’t something he does all the time just to mess with Osamu. Osamu scowls at him, but yanks his headphones out and shoves them in his pocket anyways, letting Suna fall into step beside him. 

“Hey,” Suna says, slipping his hand into Osamu’s, curling his fingers in against Osamu’s palm in some bid to get a little warmer. Their shoulders bump and Suna’s smiling, really smiling, in a way that Osamu hasn’t seen in some time. “Say congrats.”

“Congrats,” Osamu says without really thinking about it, unable to stop the reflexive smile that pulls at his own mouth, mirroring Suna. And then a moment later, he frowns. “Don’t you have class right now?”

“We had a test,” Suna says, waving his question off. He squints up at the blinding clear sky, the clean, crisp blue of early winter. “I finished early.”

Osamu has half a mind to ask Suna if what he means by that is that it was too easy and he aced it or if he decided halfway through that it wasn’t worth the effort and left it all half-finished, because Suna’s always been about as lazy as he is smart, especially when it comes to his studies. But then Suna turns to smile at Osamu again, and it’s so warm and soft that any sharpness on the tip of Osamu’s tongue melts away instantly. Osamu lets out a breath and reaches over to tuck Suna’s hair back out of his eyes. 

“What am I congratulating you for?” Osamu asks. It’s usually a fifty-fifty bet, whether or not he’ll get a real answer out of Suna, but there’s something bright and excited about the way Suna’s carrying himself, so Osamu figures it tips the odds in his favor, this time. 

Suna stops walking but keeps his hand in Osamu’s, anchoring him. He smiles, one of his rare smiles that gathers in the corners of his eyes and stretches a wide grin across his face, unfiltered, unencumbered joy. Osamu reminds himself to breathe. 

“Well,” Suna says, a little hushed in a way that he only gets when he’s really excited about something, like if he says it too loudly, he’ll jinx it. “In the spring, after we graduate, you’ll officially be able to say that three of your high school teammates went pro.”

Osamu’s eyes widen, his heart leaping in his chest, and he’s reaching out to hug Suna before he even realizes it. Suna’s laughter is warm and delighted in his ear as Suna loops his arms loosely around Osamu’s waist, and Osamu holds him tight, as if for dear life, an odd sensation buzzing across his skin that he chooses to call a vicarious happiness, trying to ignore the way his stomach dropped hearing those words. Because he really _is_ happy for Suna, truly, honestly, and the look on Suna’s face when Osamu releases him is so very pleased that Osamu almost doesn’t have it in him to feel anything else. 

“Holy shit, congrats,” Osamu breathes out, feeling a little winded. “Since when?”

Suna shrugs like it’s nothing, but the smile still sitting squarely on his face gives him away. “Paperwork got finalized this morning,” he says. 

In the bright, sharp light of early winter, Suna’s cheeks are rosy and warm and the light reflects off his windswept hair like broken glass. It’s times like this, Osamu thinks, when Suna’s so beautiful that it’s hard to look at him, like staring at the sun, like looking out over miles of fresh white snow and trying not get blinded, and it’s all Osamu can do to just stand there and take it. Suna’s still grinning, so Osamu is too, mirroring him on instinct, even as the brief wave of elation at the news fades into something cold and heavy in his gut. A light breeze blows through the area, and Osamu feels the chill start to seep into his bones. He shivers but squeezes Suna’s hand once, keeps the smile dutifully on his face. 

“That’s amazing,” Osamu says, and he means it, he does, even if it makes him feel like his throat is closing up. “I’m so happy for you.”  
  


* * *

  
If you asked Osamu what, exactly, shifts after that day, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell you. It’s nothing tangible, really, because for all intents and purposes, everything is the same. He goes to class and his part-time job and each day cobbles together a little more of what he needs to actually start his own business after he graduates, and in between, he runs to the store to buy Suna more shampoo or bickers with him over what movie to watch or makes dinner for two. It’s all the same, and yet it’s not, because now, every time Osamu sits down next to Suna for a meal or meets Suna after his volleyball practice wraps up or pokes his head into Suna’s bedroom in the morning to wake him up for the class he always comes just short of oversleeping, Osamu’s struck by this overwhelming sense of dread. It’s like there’s a giant doomsday clock hanging over his head, slowly ticking down to when Suna will inevitably leave. And Osamu knows that it’s stupid, that this is all just a part of what it means for them to grow up, for them to go out into the world as adults with jobs and lives, but it doesn’t ease the way that every time Suna smiles at him, every time Suna lays across Osamu’s lap like he’s been doing his whole life, Osamu feels his blood run cold. 

_Is this the last time?_ he finds himself wondering over and over. Or maybe _this?_ Or _this?_

Suna finds him one day after morning classes like he always does every Tuesday and Thursday, because they both have a free hour or two to have lunch and turn their brains off before they have to run off again. Osamu usually loves it, looks forward to it all morning like a light at the end of the tunnel as he does his level best not to fall asleep during lecture for a class he’s always a hair away from failing. But for whatever reason, there’s a day when he sees Suna standing there at the base of the steps leading up to the lecture hall, leaning on the railing and staring off aimlessly into some middle distance, and Osamu is suddenly seized by an intense, panicky fear. He looks at Suna, at the way his hair sticks up at odd angles from the winter wind, at the stray snowflakes stuck to his eyelashes, and all Osamu can think is, _I have to get out of here_. Suna looks up when he hears Osamu approaching and smiles, expectant, and all Osamu can think is, _I can’t do this_. 

“Hey,” Suna says, easy, warm, like always. “Hungry? If we hurry, we can probably get the lunch special at that place by the train station before they sell out.”

Osamu has no idea why the next words out of his mouth are, “I can’t.”

The look Suna gives him in response is perplexed, almost startled. His mouth turns down in a frown, and Osamu feels a wave of guilt crash over him. 

“Why?” Suna asks, and his tone is still low and easy, but Osamu can feel something hiding just under the surface like nails poking through carpet. 

“Uh, a classmate needed help with something,” Osamu lies lamely, unable to come up with anything better on the fly. “This was the only time that worked.”

Suna hums, eyes narrowing. He’s kept growing since high school, and Osamu’s long since stopped counting the distance between them, but in this moment, he suddenly becomes acutely aware of the handful of centimeters Suna has on him as Suna looks down at him in a way that Osamu’s tempted to describe as looming. Osamu swallows around the lump in his throat. Out of the two of them, Suna’s always been the better liar. 

“Okay,” Suna says finally, and Osamu tries not to wince at how hard and brittle it sounds. He’s upset, but he doesn’t do confrontation any more than Osamu does, so instead of shouting or stamping his feet, he just says brusquely, “Here. You were up late last night. Thought you might need it.”

It’s then that Osamu notices that Suna’s holding two cups of coffee from their favorite coffee shop all the way on the other side of campus, iced black coffee for Suna even in the dead of winter and something warmer and sweeter for Osamu. Osamu accepts it, not knowing what else to do, and then watches helplessly as Suna shrugs his backpack up a little higher onto his shoulder and turns to leave. 

“See you, I guess,” Suna says, voice flat and unreadable. “Good luck with”—he makes a vague gesture—“whatever.”

There’s a part of Osamu that wants to call after Suna, that wants to apologize, because he hates the look on Suna’s face, hates that it’s his fault it’s there in the first place. But there’s another part of Osamu that feels a sickening sort of satisfaction about the whole thing, because for whatever reason, this feels like something that Osamu has to do. Like he’s protecting himself, somehow. Like he’s fending off the monsters chasing him. 

Osamu ends up spending most of the day alone, and then the next, and the next. It’s like now that he’s given himself permission to do this once, he can’t stop, coming up with every excuse to not spend every waking moment with this boy who never seems to stay put long enough for Osamu to keep pace with him. He wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes to the sound of Suna wandering around their apartment, pacing or watching something on low volume or raiding their pantry for snacks, and Osamu knows that it means that Suna’s probably not sleeping much, but instead of opening his door to let Suna crawl into his bed and curl himself into the hollow of Osamu’s waiting arms to try to beat back the insomnia together like he usually does, Osamu just lays wide awake in his bed, listening, heart in his throat, like a coward. And when he sees Suna in the morning, he tries not to notice the dark circles forming under his eyes, and Suna just looks at him, hard and stony-faced, like he’s daring Osamu to do something, but it’s like Osamu’s stuck and he can’t. Suna sometimes still asks if Osamu wants to walk to campus together or meet up later for lunch or a study session, but most of the time he doesn’t really say anything at all, just nods when Osamu weaves some weak tale for why he’ll be making himself scarce today. 

“Okay,” Suna says, each time. Just, “Okay. I’ll see you later, then.”

When the end of the term rolls around, instead of walking to the train station together like they usually do to part ways and return to their respective families for the holidays, Osamu wakes up one morning to an empty apartment. He finds a note on the fridge scrawled in Suna’s messy, nearly illegible handwriting that says _Catching the early train back. See you in the new year. Merry Christmas._

Osamu stares at it for a long time, wondering how it’s possible to feel so gutted from such a simple thing.  
  


* * *

  
In actuality, if Osamu really thinks about it, he knows that it probably started much, much earlier than an offhand comment at the beginning of his final year of college. He’s just not sure when he first started to notice it, this way that he constantly finds himself at the intersection between waiting and wanting, push and pull. When he’s eight, maybe, and he gives Suna half of his popsicle on the hottest day of the summer just to see him smile. Or when he’s sixteen and he makes Suna laugh so hard he cries and then can’t stop thinking about how to do that again. Or when he’s twenty and they stumble home together from a bar, Suna supporting more than half of Osamu’s weight, laughing at him a little and then laughing some more when Osamu fusses about it, and Osamu finds himself thinking every time, _yes, and_. 

There are times when Suna comes home and climbs into Osamu’s lap when he’s watching a movie, settling between Osamu’s legs with his head on Osamu’s chest, or steals bites from his dinner without asking, their knees bumping under the table, or slips his hand into Osamu’s during the winter, pressing icy fingers into Osamu’s warm palms, and Osamu thinks, _maybe_. Because there’s a part of him that knows that this isn’t really what friends do, that friends, even friends as close as they are, who have known each other for as long as they have, aren’t really supposed to share this much space, be this much a part of each other. Because Suna gets this look in his eye sometimes like he’s asking a question and only Osamu knows the answer, this look that makes Osamu want to make a home for himself in Suna’s chest and never come out.

But then there are times when Suna leans in close, for one reason or another, and Osamu thinks, _he could kiss me_ , thinks _this could be the right moment_ , but Suna never does. Osamu’s lost count of the number of times he’s held his breath, waiting for a thing that never comes, each time his heart hammering in his chest so loudly he’s sure that Suna can hear it, each time unable to do anything but stand and stare and wait, each time equal parts disappointed and relieved when nothing happens. Osamu has this distinct memory of when Suna turned twenty, Osamu joking around at the tail end of the party they hosted and asking Suna what he wanted for his birthday because he hadn’t had time to go and buy a gift beforehand, and Suna had looked at him so intently that Osamu could hardly stand it ( _anything?_ in that sly, coy voice). But then after a moment, Suna had looked away and stretched his arms over his head, yawning and complaining about being tired and having early practice the next day, and Osamu had laid awake in his bed for the rest of the night trying to figure out why it had felt, in that moment, like he could get swallowed up by Suna and be lost forever.

It’s been like this since high school, since they were kids, Suna tugging on Osamu’s sleeve or collapsing in a heap in Osamu’s lap or leaning a head on his shoulder during long bus rides, and there’s never been an _and_ , never an answer to the _maybe_. There’s been just this, Suna constantly bumping into him, knocking their shoulders together as they walk home together, poking a finger at Osamu’s cheek to get him to smile again when Osamu pouts, climbing half over him to reach something, hand braced on Osamu’s thigh, and that’s it. That’s where it always stops, pulling up just short of the line, Osamu thinks, he maybe wants Suna to want to cross. It’s this holding pattern that they’ve both sort of gotten used to over the years, and Osamu has no idea how to break it, where to start even if he wanted, if he even thinks it would be worth it to try, in the end. Because there comes a time when you’ve been doing something for so long that it becomes almost impossible to imagine it any other way.  
  


* * *

  
Atsumu corners Osamu when he’s putting a batch of gingerbread cookies in the oven, getting ready to entertain their baby nieces and nephews when their relatives storm Osamu’s family home for the annual Miya family Christmas party. Their parents are out running last minute errands and Atsumu’s supposed to be putting up decorations, but he’s in the kitchen bothering Osamu instead, like he knows he can be as annoying as he wants and Osamu won’t try to escape too far and run the risk of his cookies burning. 

“Hey,” Atsumu says abruptly, kicking at Osamu from where he’s sitting on the kitchen counter. “You and Sunarin fighting or something?”

Osamu frowns and ignores the way Suna’s name sends a shockwave of anxiety through his whole body. He’s been home for two full days, and Suna hasn’t texted him once. Osamu hasn’t exactly been that proactive about reaching out to Suna either, but Suna’s the one with the bad habit of texting all hours of the day, ninety percent of the time in some kind of stream-of-consciousness ramble about something funny he saw or heard. 

“What are you talking about?” Osamu asks, staring at his cookies through the oven door. 

Atsumu rolls his eyes. “You know damn well what I’m talking about,” he says, but he only sounds about half as irritated as Osamu’s expecting. 

Osamu looks up, still frowning, and finds Atsumu looking at him with that particular crease between his brows that suggests that he’s at least considering being genuinely concerned. Atsumu crosses his arms. 

“I’m only asking ’cause he keeps texting me,” Atsumu says. “He _never_ texts me. It’s weird.”

And the thing is, Osamu knows that Atsumu’s right. It _is_ weird. Suna and Atsumu have been friends for a long time, but neither of them are really the type to text the other unless it’s for something strictly functional, like arranging logistics for Atsumu to visit or for Suna and Osamu to go to one of Atsumu’s matches. They’ve always been the sort of bicker-in-person kind of friends, counting on Osamu to ferry back and forth anything important in the interim, which Osamu has spent years complaining about, but something about the thought that Suna may have actually listened this time and taken it upon himself to talk to Atsumu directly about something leaves a cold and slimy feeling in Osamu’s gut. 

“And you know, he keeps asking about _you_ , like if something happened or you’re not feeling well or something,” Atsumu continues. He waves an exasperated hand, “And I dunno why he can’t just ask you himself and every time I ask him about it, he gets all cagey, and really, Samu, would it kill the two of you to just have a real conversation like normal people? When’s the last time you talked to him anyway? He’s making it sound like it’s been ages but, like, you live together. Am I going crazy? How do you not talk to someone you live with?”

Osamu feels like he experiences the entire spectrum of human emotion as Atsumu rants. A twinge of hope at the thought that Suna’s been asking after him. Unease at the thought that Suna apparently doesn’t feel like he can talk to Osamu about it. Annoyance at the insinuation that out of the two of them, Atsumu’s the one closer to normality. A generous helping of guilt at the reminder that Osamu’s been so reluctant to spend time with Suna lately. Osamu sighs. 

“We’re not fighting,” he says. You have to be actually interacting with someone to be fighting, he thinks. 

“Really,” Atsumu deadpans, sharp eyes boring straight into Osamu’s. 

Osamu stares back at him, unblinking. “Really,” he says. “I think I’d know if we were fighting.”

Atsumu scoffs. “Yeah, no offense, Samu, but you’re as dumb as a sack of potatoes,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “You’re not talking to each other, and it sounds like Suna thinks _he_ fucked up somehow, and I can tell you’re all worked up about _something_ , so y’know I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think you’re fighting. And if you care about the guy at all, you should talk to him before this all blows up in your face.”

And again, as loathe as Osamu is to ever admit that Atsumu occasionally has a coherent thought, there’s a part of Osamu that knows Atsumu is probably right, that knows that this weird standoff he’d been having with his phone and by extension Suna is probably the last thing he should be entertaining right now, but Osamu doesn’t know how to explain the way he looks at Suna these days and thinks about how they’re just three months shy of graduating from college now and Osamu ends up feeling like he’s drowning. He doesn’t know how to explain that coming home to their apartment to the familiar sight of Suna wrapped in a thick blanket like it’s a cape as he wanders through the living room lately has felt less like finding dry land and more like he’s been left out at sea, unmoored and lost and treading water right above the sharks he knows lives just below the surface. Osamu knows that it doesn’t make sense, because Suna’s one of the most important people in Osamu’s whole life, because yes, Osamu loves him, will maybe always love him, however much or little Suna lets him, because the last thing Osamu wants is to lose Suna all over again, for Suna to move away and disappear without a trace and never look back. But he also knows that there’s a part of him that’s so very afraid, and the wild animal in him has taken over, fight or flight, do or die. 

“We’re not fighting,” Osamu says again, like if he just says it enough, it’ll eventually become true. 

“You’re an idiot,” Atsumu says, and Osamu thinks that he’s probably right about that too.  
  


* * *

  
Part of the problem, Osamu thinks sometimes, is that Suna really did kiss him, just once, at the end of their third year, and then never again. 

They make it to the semifinals in that year’s Spring Tournament, and when they lose, Osamu collapses, falling flat on his ass and feeling the weariness seep into his bones at the knowledge that this is the very last time he’ll experience this. And then he looks at Suna next to him and for a moment can’t breathe. Suna’s staring out across the court like he’s still waiting for something, a kind of sharpness in his eyes that Osamu can’t place, and even after Atsumu comes to haul the both of them off the court, for once taking his role as captain seriously, even after they say their thank you’s to their coach, the band, all the many people supporting them, Suna seems like he hasn’t quite come back down to earth.

“Hey,” Osamu says softly. He nudges Suna’s shoulder and holds out Suna’s jacket for him to take. “You okay?”

Suna snaps his eyes up to meet Osamu’s, quick and sudden like he’s been startled, and Osamu swears the world stops for a moment. Suna, who’s so often so well contained, so maddeningly, deliberately drawn inside whatever arbitrary boundaries he’s decided to set out, looks untethered and untamed, like some kind of animal let loose from its cage, and Osamu stares and thinks, _who are you?_ Thinks, _is this who you were all along?_ Thinks, _is this who you’ll become?_ It scares him a little, but maybe not as much as it should.

Osamu’s jolted out of his thoughts by Suna’s hand at his elbow, and suddenly he’s being dragged away from where the rest of the team is lingering, exhausted and sad, double checking to make sure they didn’t leave any of their gear out on the court. Suna’s jacket falls to the floor, forgotten. Suna pulls Osamu down one long hallway and then another, till they’re in a deserted part of the arena, hidden away from everyone else, and Osamu doesn’t even have the time to ask what the hell this is all about before Suna shoves him back against the wall and kisses him. Osamu can taste salt and sweat and Suna’s cherry chapstick, and Suna is pushy and insistent about how he kisses, like he’s done this before, or maybe just knows better what it is that he wants. Osamu thinks, distantly, that he should maybe stop him, that this isn’t really a thing that falls neatly within the bounds of normal friendships, but he’s kissing Suna back before he can think better of it, hands grabbing at Suna’s shirt to pull him closer, and his whole body feels like it’s on fire. 

Osamu’s dizzy by the time Suna pulls away, heart pounding unsteadily in his chest. He has about half a second to notice how pretty Suna looks like this, flushed cheeks and messy hair and pupils blown wide, before Suna collapses on him, shoving his face into the curve of where Osamu’s neck meets his shoulder, hands resting against the wall on either side of Osamu, effectively boxing him in. Osamu can hear the harsh in-out of Suna’s breath in his ear, rapid and a little erratic, and it takes him a moment to notice that Suna’s shaking. Whether it’s from the kiss or coming down from the adrenaline high that carries them through their matches or something else altogether, Osamu never quite figures out, but he lets his hands, still clutching Suna’s shirt slowly come to rest at the small of Suna’s back, trying to find some way to steady him. 

“Suna?” Osamu ventures after a long moment has passed, and then when he doesn’t get a response, softer, “Rin.”

Osamu hears Suna draw in a sharp breath, and when he lets it out, it tickles at Osamu’s neck. He fights the urge to shiver. Suna’s quiet for half a beat longer, but it’s a different kind of quiet now, calmer, more settled, so Osamu waits. 

“This isn’t the end, right?” Suna says finally, and Osamu feels more than hears him speak, his mouth brushing against Osamu’s skin, his voice rumbling through his chest. “This is just the beginning.”

Osamu has no idea what Suna is talking about, only that there’s something in him that’s spiraling and he’s counting on Osamu to pull him back out, so Osamu tightens his hold around Suna’s waist and says quietly, “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

Suna pushes himself back away from Osamu as he draws in another deep breath, but he doesn’t stray too far, still close enough that Osamu can see the small flecks of gold in Suna’s green eyes. For a moment, Osamu almost thinks that Suna might kiss him again and the thought sends a jolt of something caught halfway between anticipation and anxiety up his spine. But Suna doesn’t. Suna just looks at him instead, sharp eyes searching for something that Osamu’s not sure he has to give. After a minute, Suna looks away and steps back, and Osamu feels like he can breathe again. 

“We should probably head back,” Suna says, voice muffled by the motion of him scrubbing his hands over his face, brushing away almost-tears, like he’s wiping away the feeling of losing and failing and anything else he no longer wants to take with him. “Wouldn’t want coach to send Atsumu after us.”

Osamu laughs, because it seems like the thing to do, but his feet feel heavy, like he’s stuck in place, and after a few steps, Suna turns halfway around and raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Are you coming or not?” Suna asks, and Osamu nods and hurries to catch up before he gets left behind.

(The other part of the problem, Osamu thinks, is that he keeps coming back to this moment, replaying it over and over in his head, unable to move on, and Suna has never once looked back.)  
  


* * *

  
Osamu tells himself that he can’t be upset about things that he set in motion, but it’s a difficult thing to remember when all of his most recent texts with Suna go a little like this: Osamu will work himself up to texting Suna, asking how he’s doing or how his winter break has been or if he has plans for New Year’s, and Suna will respond in what must be, mathematically, the fewest words humanly possible ( _fine_ or _uneventful_ or _the usual_ ). Each word feels like a knife in his back, and Osamu’s never really thought of Suna as particularly chatty, but he realizes all at once this winter, curled up under a thick blanket in his childhood bed and listening to Atsumu snore, that there’s a distinct difference between not talking about anything in particular and not talking at all. 

Still, he tries, because he’s at least mature enough to admit that he’s probably the one who needs to be extending an olive branch. He also, maybe, doesn’t try as hard as he should, because confrontation has never been his strong suit, a lifetime of fights with his brother notwithstanding, and he’s always probably been a bit of a coward when it comes to Suna. 

_Merry Christmas_ , Osamu texts Suna just past midnight, day of. He knows Suna sees it, because Suna’s rarely asleep before Osamu is and Osamu sees the little ticker pop up saying as much almost immediately besides, but it still takes Suna till the morning to text him back. And when he does, it’s just to say _Merry Christmas_ , no complaints about how his sister keeps stealing his sweaters or how his grandmother’s bothering him about great-grandbabies again or stories about how their family cat tore through the gift wrapping of her gift overnight and ate all her new treats before the family was even awake. Osamu tries not to take it too personally.  
  


* * *

  
Osamu arrives back at their apartment later than he means to but earlier than he wants. It’s just after the new year, and ordinarily, Osamu might’ve tried to make it back sooner, because there’s always been something comforting and cozy about the spare few days between the holiday rush and the beginning of the new school term, because Osamu always brings back tea that his grandmother gifts him over Christmas and Suna bakes his mother’s famous apple pie, recipe measured out haphazardly without paying much attention to grams of this or milliliters of that. It shouldn’t by now, but it still surprises Osamu every time that despite all of that, it turns out perfect every year (Osamu had asked him, once, how he managed to do that, and Suna had grinned at him as he sifted an indeterminate amount of flour into a bowl for crust and said, _family secret_ ). Osamu usually spends most of these days bundled up in a soft, thick blanket, and most nights he’ll fall asleep with Suna curled into his chest, the dark circles under his eyes fading with each day as he beats back the insomnia that he swears flares up every time he returns home to Aichi to see his parents. It’s a time of the year that always feels suspended just outside of the real world, and the thought of it usually makes something warm and soothing settle in the pit of his stomach, brings his heart into his throat with a kind of anticipation he can’t quite put into words, but this year, as Osamu unlocks the door to their apartment, all it does is make his chest ache. 

It’s getting late, within arms’ reach of midnight if you were to stretch out a little, but it’s not so late that Suna wouldn’t still be up, puttering around the apartment eating sweets he bought on sale after Christmas or watching a movie or putting a kettle on to make some tea, and so it surprises Osamu a little when he nudges the front door open and finds himself staring into the dark. He frowns.

“I’m home,” Osamu says softly into the dimly lit apartment. 

There’s no response.

Osamu can hear the faint whir of the dishwasher running and the TV playing softly in the living room, but save for that, Osamu might’ve thought that the apartment was empty, abandoned. He pads into the apartment proper, craning his neck to look towards Suna’s room, wondering if maybe he’s still up, but there’s no light under the crack of his door even though just shy of eleven at night is usually too early for Suna to have quieted his restless thoughts into something resembling calm. And then Osamu squints through the darkness of the living room, eyes slowly adjusting to the city lights outside filtering in through the thin curtains and the occasional sharp flash from the TV across the space, and he sees Suna tucked in at their kotatsu, curled up on his side, pillowing his head on an arm folded under him. For a moment, Osamu thinks that maybe Suna is still awake, but as he approaches, he spies the slow, even rise and fall of Suna’s shoulders as he breathes, and the expression on Suna’s face is relaxed and softened by sleep. Like this, he looks boyish and sweet, almost nothing like the sharp, fierce front he puts out into the world. Like this, he looks so small, even though Osamu knows that Suna’s been taller than him for years, like they’re still six years old and everything in the world is still possible, and sometimes Osamu wonders how many people have seen Suna like this, how many people know Suna like this, soft and unguarded. Osamu nudges Suna’s shoulder gently. 

“Suna.”

Suna murmurs sleepily and shoves his face more into the crook of his elbow. Osamu breathes out a small breath that might’ve been a laugh, in better times, and looks around for the remote to turn off the TV. The tabletop of their kotatsu is littered with mandarin orange peels and the brightly colored, sour candies that Suna would sometimes sneak into his lunch when his grandmother wasn’t looking during high school, bits of foil from chocolates shaped like snowmen and presents and a mostly finished mug of hot cocoa, now cold. The big bowl that Suna had piled high with oranges before he left for home is half empty now, and maybe, if Osamu were less of a chicken about all of this and caught the earlier train back, he would’ve made it back in time to have some with Suna. Maybe, instead of stewing in this odd limbo he’s found himself in, he would’ve spent the afternoon cozy and warm and laughing when Suna would, inevitably, shove the mandarin oranges into his mouth whole without bothering to pick them apart into pieces (it’s more efficient that way, he always says, and you can have more in the same amount of time, and Osamu’s always thought he looked a little like a bunny, with his mouth full and cheeks puffed out like that).

Osamu finds the remote buried under a handful of candy wrappers and a crumpled receipt from the convenience store down the block, and when he shuts the TV off, he blinks at the darkness a few times to clear the afterimage of the glare from his eyes. Suna sleeps on.

“Hey,” Osamu tries again, nudging him a little more firmly this time. “Suna, come on. You’re gonna hurt your back if you sleep like this all night.”

Suna makes another soft, sleepy sound but otherwise doesn’t wake, and Osamu sighs, weighing his options. He hasn’t tried in years and Suna’s not that lanky, skinny kid Osamu grew up with anymore, but Osamu’s pretty sure that he can still pick Suna up and carry all of his dead weight, and there would’ve been a time when Osamu wouldn’t have hesitated. But Atsumu’s words ring loudly in his ears ( _I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think you’re fighting_ ), and Osamu thinks about the cold, shuttered-off looks that Suna had started to give him in the days leading up to heading home for the holidays, and he wonders if Suna would even want him to do this. He wonders if Suna would be more upset if Osamu just let him sleep and woke up with a sore neck from sleeping in such an awkward position. 

After a moment’s consideration, Osamu carefully eases Suna up into his arms, and it’s not quite as easy as Osamu remembers from the last time he did this, back when they were first moving into their apartment before starting college and Osamu carried a laughing Suna inside bridal style as if he had any right to think that this could be the first of many homes they’d have together, if the universe were a little kinder. It’s not quite as easy, but Osamu manages just fine, and as he stands, Suna stirs a little in his arms, just barely blinking open bleary eyes to peer up at him. 

“Samu?” Suna mumbles, and Osamu’s relieved to find no trace of coldness in it. 

“Yeah, it’s just me,” Osamu says softly, voice barely above a whisper. “Go to sleep.”

Suna hums and his eyes fall shut again. He lifts his arms to wrap around Osamu’s neck and leans in towards Osamu’s chest, comfortable and easy, like the last few weeks haven’t happened, like Suna hasn’t left Osamu’s last five texts from earlier in the day unanswered, like in this tiny pocket of the world, things worked out the way they should have. Osamu nudges the door to Suna’s bedroom open with his foot and manages to make it to Suna’s bed without tripping over anything Suna’s left lying around on the floor like little traps, and as Osamu sets Suna down and tugs his blankets up over him, he thinks that maybe for once his prayers worked. Maybe the universe has decided to be a little gentler to him, at least for today. Suna lets out a small sigh in his sleep and curls into his bed, rolling onto his stomach and shoving his arms up under his pillows like he always does. Osamu smiles and fights the urge to reach out and brush Suna’s hair out of his face. 

As Osamu turns to leave, he hears Suna murmur quietly again, slurred together words that sound suspiciously like Osamu’s name, followed almost wistfully by, “I miss you.”

Osamu freezes and looks back at Suna, wondering if maybe Suna woke up in earnest, but Suna doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t stir or make another sound, and Osamu’s left wondering if maybe he’s just hearing things, if Suna means it, if Suna will even remember it in the morning. Suna, who doesn’t say things like this, not really, not ever. Suna, who doesn’t say anything at all, most of the time. Osamu forces the air back into his lungs as he walks slowly out of Suna’s room again, head spinning in a way that only Suna can make happen with so little. He lets out a breath as he shuts Suna’s door behind him, leaning against it and letting his head fall back with a dull _thunk_. He closes his eyes and counts to ten, tries to remember a time when he didn’t feel like his lungs were filling with water. When he opens his eyes again, willing himself to feel steadier, he goes back to the kotatsu to tidy up before he turns in for the night and he finds, amid the stray peels and candy wrappers, a small plastic bowl of orange slices, peeled and pulled apart neatly into separate pieces, waiting, untouched. For whatever reason, the sight makes him feel unbearably lonely.  
  


* * *

  
In the morning, it’s cold when Osamu wakes up, and he feels more awake than he has in a long, long time. It’s still early, earlier than Osamu would ordinarily get up, the light fighting to break through his curtains pale and weak, but Osamu doesn’t feel tired at all, never mind that he knows that he can’t have gotten more than a handful of hours of fitful sleep. Osamu lays in his bed for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling with a million things flying through his head, replaying every moment of the last few weeks over and over and over. Suna’s bright, unfettered joy at making his way into the professional volleyball world. Osamu’s guilt about not being able to be happier about it, the overwhelming dread at picturing what his life might be like a year from now. The fear, the running, and the stupid, stupid way he’d convinced himself that if he just avoided all of it, it would somehow become less painful, eventually. Suna, asleep and alone and probably more than a little bit sad. Those goddamn orange slices Osamu couldn’t bring himself to eat. 

Osamu lets out a long breath and throws his blankets off of himself, suddenly restless. The apartment is chilly as Osamu pads out from his room, and a bit of frost clings to the windows in the living room. It’ll be some time before Suna’s up, Osamu knows, even counting how Suna slept so much earlier than he usually does last night, but Osamu feels a little like if he just sits around and waits, he’ll lose his mind. So he does the only thing he can think of—he cooks. He pulls out flour and milk, baking powder and sugar, eggs and butter, and then, after a moment’s consideration, rifles through their pantry to find the bag of chocolate chips he knows is there, buried under a pile of rice crackers and dried seaweed. 

By the time Suna’s up, the sun’s climbed a little higher in the sky and the frost has melted from the windows and the apartment has begun to fill with the soft, sweet smell of warm pancakes. Osamu hears the click of the coffee maker, the hum of the radiator, the soft shuffling as Suna approaches his bedroom door and yanks it open. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Suna stands in the doorway for a long moment, frowning, narrowing his eyes at the kotatsu like he’s accusing it of something, and Osamu wonders how much Suna remembers from the night before, half-asleep and probably more than a little too honest. And then Suna’s gaze sweeps over to him in the kitchen, staring at him across the bit of counter space between Osamu and the living room, and Osamu feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Suna’s expression is closed-off and distant, and even from across the room, Osamu can see the dark circles under his eyes. He wonders with his heart in his throat how little Suna has slept in since they last saw each other to have fallen asleep so early last night. He wonders how many more nights it’ll take before Suna stops looking so weary.

Osamu takes a deep breath and tries for a smile. “Morning,” he says, voice small. “Are you hungry?”

Suna blinks slowly at him for, appraising, before his gaze shifts to the small stack of pancakes Osamu’s been slowly piling onto a plate as he waited for Suna to wake. For a moment, he wonders if Suna will just turn around and disappear back into his room, but then Suna lets out a small sigh and inclines his head in Osamu’s general direction. 

“Are those apology pancakes?” he asks in a tone that Osamu knows would’ve been more amused than spent if things hadn’t gotten so convoluted. 

“Uh,” Osamu replies eloquently, stunned and trying to remember if he’s done this before. He comes up empty, but he wonders if it’s just because he’s never really been good at admitting to himself that things were going south. 

Suna huffs out another sigh and pads over to the kotatsu, waving Osamu over with waggling fingers ( _gimme_ ). Osamu brings over the pancakes and a brimming mug of coffee for good measure too because Suna looks so exhausted that there’s a little part of Osamu that really does worry that Suna might keel over at any moment. Suna hums softly as Osamu sets the pancakes down in front of him and reaches out to pull off a piece and pop it in his mouth.

“At least they’re chocolate chip,” Suna says idly, licking a bit of melted chocolate off his thumb. 

Osamu knows he should say something. He knows that whatever he has to say to Suna, it’s so very long overdue, but his throat feels tight and his mouth feels dry and all he can think, still, is _don’t leave me_. It’s pathetic, Osamu thinks, that he can’t just get over himself and stop being so small and petty and selfish, and all it’s done the past few weeks is make him be a complete asshole to someone he cares about more than almost anyone else in the entire world. Osamu sighs. Suna waits, sipping at his coffee and peering over the rim at Osamu with an unreadable look. Expectation, maybe. A quiet kind of patience. 

“I’m sorry,” Osamu says finally, his voice less steady than he means for it to be. He looks down at his hands in his lap and feels a little like a child. “I know I’ve been a shitty friend lately.”

Suna makes a soft sound that’s maybe halfway to a bark of a laugh, maybe would’ve been if he were more awake. Osamu doesn’t want to think about how bitter he imagines it sounding. 

“I was just… I was being stupid,” Osamu says. He twists his fingers together like it’ll somehow release the knot in his stomach. “I was trying to deal with some stuff, I guess, or maybe not deal with it, but it was about me, really. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I’m sorry.”

Suna looks at him for a long moment before slowly setting his mug down, turning something over in his mind. Osamu can barely look at him, can barely breathe, but then Suna nods, once, and turns back to his pancakes. 

“Okay,” Suna says, short and simple like before but maybe less cold. 

Osamu jerks his head up. “What?”

Suna raises an eyebrow at him as he brings another bite of pancake up to his mouth. He’s picking apart all the places with the most chocolate and leaving the rest behind, unwanted.

“Sorry, did you want me to yell at you?” Suna asks, and it almost feels like Suna’s just teasing him, almost like they can go back to how things were, just like that. “’Cause you might have to wait till I get a bit more caffeine in my system first.”

Osamu blinks, completely thrown. Of all the scenarios he’d prepared himself for, this wasn’t one of them. He wonders what it says about him that it’s still a surprise, that Suna defies all expectation. 

“No, I just,” Osamu manages to get out. “I mean, I thought you’d be pissed at me.”

Suna laughs sharply. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m plenty pissed at you,” he says, and Osamu wonders if he should take Suna’s earlier comment as more of a threat than a joke. “But I believe you. That you know what you did and you’re going to try not to do it again. So, yeah, okay.”

Osamu just stares. He wonders where, exactly, along the line he miscalculated, because he built this whole thing up to be such a big deal in his mind, like it would’ve taken Herculean effort to right everything that had been wronged, but here Suna is, blowing straight past every baseless assumption Osamu had made, making it all look so easy, like Osamu could’ve just done this all along. 

“Can you tell me one thing, though?” Suna asks. He’s frowning at his pancakes now, a little furrow in his brow. “Can you tell me what it was? I’ve been trying to figure out what I could possibly have done to make you act all weird, and I’ve got nothing.”

Osamu feels a dull pain behind his solar plexus at the same time a sudden spike of adrenaline shoots up his spine, because here it is, here’s everything Osamu’s always been too afraid to say out loud, like the saying of it would end up sinking him. 

“Like I said, it was about me, really, not you,” he says, hoping hopelessly that Suna will let this drop so Osamu doesn’t have to find the right words to set his fear to. “And it’s stupid.”

Suna’s expression softens, just a touch, warmer than Osamu’s seen in a long time. He’d be tempted to call it fond, except that just thinking that right now feels risky, somehow. 

“Well, good thing I already know you’re stupid,” Suna says, and there’s something so forgiving in his tone that makes a new wave of guilt rise up at the back of Osamu’s throat. 

Osamu knows he can’t lie to Suna, he does, even if it feels like his heart is about to burst out from behind his ribs, even if this is everything he’s always wanted to avoid. He takes a deep breath and frowns down at his hands again. 

“It was that day, you know, when you signed with the EJP Raijin,” Osamu says, wincing a little remembering it and everything that followed. “I don’t know how to explain it. You told me, and it was like all of a sudden, I was twelve years old again, and you’d gone away and I didn’t know if I was ever going to see you again. And I don’t know. I guess it scared me.”

“So, what?” Suna says, scoffing a little. “You thought it’d suck less if you pushed me away before I could leave?”

Osamu shrugs even though as Suna says it, he becomes acutely aware that that’s exactly how it was, that somehow his mind had rationalized the whole thing by pretending like if he could make it so that Suna wasn’t there, he’d have nothing left to lose. 

“I guess so,” Osamu says quietly. He shrugs again. “Like I said. Stupid.”

A long silence hangs in the air between them, and Osamu can feel Suna’s eyes on him but can’t make himself look up. He picks at a scab on his index finger, courtesy of dinner duty back home and a bit of carelessness. 

Osamu hears Suna let out a long breath, and then a moment later, Suna’s hands are slipping into his, easing his anxious fingers away before he reopens the cut, and when Osamu looks up, he finds Suna looking at him with an almost painfully sad expression. 

“Osamu,” Suna says softly, squeezing Osamu’s hands once. “I’m going to be leaving this place, but I’m not leaving you. You know that, right?”

Osamu feels something crack in his chest. “Yeah,” he says, voice feeling rough against the back of his throat. “Yeah, I know. It’s just… People grow apart, y’know? And I… I don’t want…”

Even now, Osamu finds that he can’t quite say it, but Suna sighs softly like he’s heard it anyways. 

“Do you really think that’s all it’d take for you to be rid of me?” Suna asks. “Just what do you take our relationship for, anyway?”

“But,” Osamu says, and he knows he sounds desperate and pitiful, but now that he’s opened the lid on this box he’s kept sealed away inside of him, he can’t quite get it to stop overflowing. “You don’t know that. Everything’s going to be so different.”

Suna smiles at him like Osamu’s maybe a little sad, like there’s something he’s not getting, and Osamu wants to scream and shout, _just tell me already, tell me what it is you want and I’ll do it_. 

“Not all changes are bad, Osamu,” Suna says gently, like Osamu is something fragile he’s afraid of breaking. “Sometimes, changes are just the beginning, right?”

Osamu opens his mouth to protest, to say something to prove Suna wrong, and then he hears Suna’s words and freezes, suddenly breathless, something about it all rattling around in his chest like loose change. _This is just the beginning_ , echoing in his ears and the phantom touch of shaking hands and the taste of cherry chapstick. A memory he’d been so sure only he’d kept all this time. The totality of everything that’s made up all of Osamu’s biggest wants and hopes and fears. Osamu thinks about the last few years, about how Suna, brilliant and beautiful and all-around star player, would always turn down invitations from the pretty girls who approached him at the end of matches, opting to do whatever Osamu wanted to do instead, whether it was to stay in on a Friday night to watch a movie and eat junk food or go out for dinner and drinks with some of their friends. He thinks about how he’s never seen Suna go on a single date, ever, even though he knows for a fact that Suna has no shortage of admirers. He thinks about how every time he’d ask Suna about it, Suna would just shrug and say he wasn’t interested, and then he’d look at Osamu and smile like there was a secret hidden in there somewhere and change the subject. Osamu had always chalked it up to a general disinterest, but Suna’s looking at him now like he’s waiting for something, like he’s _been_ waiting, all this time, and Osamu feels everything he thought he knew being yanked out from beneath him. He’s free-falling, and Suna’s hands are still in his, and he can feel the ground rushing up to meet him again. 

“Do you get it now?” Suna asks quietly, and Osamu feels his body hit the pavement. 

“But—” Osamu sputters, the gears in his mind clanging against each other, out of sync and groaning with the effort of trying to fall back into place again. “But I— you just— after that day, you never—”

Suna laughs. “I never what? Never kissed you again?” he say, light and easy. “Well, maybe if you didn’t look so fucking terrified any time I even got close to trying, I would have.”

Suna leans in a little closer, and Osamu’s eyes widen, the familiar jolt of anticipation and anxiety jumping under his skin. Every memory of Suna closing in on him with those eyes that always seemed to be trying to ask him something in a language he couldn’t understand suddenly flashes through Osamu’s mind like a highlight reel, stop-motion lingering on the look Suna would get in the fraction of a second before he’d look away. Osamu had never been able to place what he saw on Suna’s face in those brief moments, and he wonders now if it was always something akin to disappointment. 

Suna smiles, sly and cat-like, lifts a hand to poke at Osamu’s cheek. “Yeah,” he says. “Kind of like that.”

Osamu draws in a sharp breath and Suna lets his hand fall again, shrugging as he says, “I figured you just needed time to work through whatever this was. Though if I’d known it was just because you had a hard time putting two and two together, I might’ve said something sooner.”

Osamu gapes, feeling silly and slow. All he can hear is his heart pounding in his chest and blood rushing in his ears, and the soft in-out of Suna’s slow, even breathing as he waits. How long, Osamu wonders, has he been waiting? How much longer would he have waited before he gave up? 

“Oh my god,” Osamu says. “I’m an idiot.”

Suna laughs again, clear and bright, and Osamu thinks to himself that he never wants to hear anything else ever again except for that laugh. 

“Yeah, you are,” Suna says. He raises his hand to brush Osamu’s hair out of his eyes. “And yet somehow, I’m still in love with you, so what does that make me?”

Osamu swears that he can feel his brain break as he tries to process everything he’s just heard, completely and utterly stunned. He hears Suna chuckle softly, and then feels Suna’s hands move to cradle his face, and it’s all Osamu can do to stare with wide eyes as Suna draws a little closer still. 

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Suna says, teasing but not unkind. “Try to look a little less like you just saw a ghost, okay?”

Osamu can’t really look anywhere but at Suna’s mouth, but he manages to get out, “I—I don’t look like that.”

Osamu feels Suna’s lips brush against his as Suna smiles and says, “How would you know?”

Suna’s lips, as he kisses Osamu, are as soft as Osamu remembers, a little cool against his own and tasting faintly of chocolate. It’s less pushy than last time, less desperate, less like Suna’s trying to claim something before it escapes him, and more like he’s trying to promise something. And this time, Osamu feels a little more like he knows what to listen for, all these things Suna says without saying anything, the careful touch of his hands against Osamu’s skin, the tiny puff of a breath when Osamu reaches out to settle his hands around Suna’s waist, the way Suna’s hold on him tightens, just a tick, in response. It’s slow and easy, like they have all the time in the world, like all of Osamu’s fears about the months and weeks and days counting down to when Suna will leave are for naught, because it really will be just the beginning, all their tomorrows stretching out before them. 

“Suna,” Osamu says softly when they part, and then, maybe even quieter, “Rin.”

Suna hums and smiles, warmer and softer than anything Osamu’s ever seen. “Osamu,” he says, still teasing a little, but loving and kind.

Suna doesn’t promise he won’t leave because they both know he has to, when the time comes, but Osamu thinks, if he listens hard enough, he can hear Suna promising to stay with him in all the ways that matter.  
  


* * *

  
(“Thank fucking _god_ ,” Atsumu exclaims when Osamu breaks the news to him that night. His voice blares out loudly from the tinny speaker of Osamu’s phone, and he’s glaring at Osamu through the fuzzy image of the video call. “Took you long enough, Samu, geez.”

Osamu sighs deeply. In hindsight, he probably should’ve waited till morning.

“I can’t believe Sunarin still likes you after you’ve gone and proven just how stupid you are,” Atsumu continues with no regard to the fact that he’s still sort of shouting and it’s past midnight already and Osamu’s shitty apartment has terribly thin walls. 

In the bed next to Osamu, Suna lifts his head up from where he’s been nestled under Osamu’s blankets, cozy and warm as he fiddles around with something on his phone. He narrows his eyes in annoyance at the noise, sharp and piercing, but his hair is sticking up a little funny on one side from where he’s been lying on it as it dries from his shower, and Osamu can’t help laughing, just a little, because the effect of it all is more cute than anything else. 

“Oi, Samu, you listening to me?” 

Suna rolls his eyes and props himself up on his elbows so he can lean into frame. 

“Hey, Atsumu,” Suna says, a sly lilt creeping into his voice. The corners of his mouth are turned up into a smirk, and Osamu notices, distantly, that it’s very apparent that Suna isn’t wearing a shirt. “We’re kind of busy right now, so Osamu’s going to have to call you back.”

Atsumu makes a sort of startled squawking sound and Suna waggles his fingers at him ( _bye!_ ) before grabbing Osamu’s phone, hanging up, and tossing it towards the end of the bed. Suna slumps down against Osamu, throwing an arm around his waist and leaning his head on Osamu’s chest. Osamu laughs and lifts a hand to run through Suna’s messy hair. 

“You know he’s going to take you way too seriously, right?” Osamu says, but he imagines that the look on his face is probably too several shades too fond for it to come across as stern as he’d maybe try for, on any other day. 

Suna shrugs and snuggles in a little closer. “That sounds like a him problem,” he says and then tips his face up and grins, a little too cheery. 

Osamu laughs, unable to stop the swell of warmth that rises up in his chest. He reaches out to brush his fingertips along Suna’s sharp cheekbones. 

“Suna Rintarou, you are a menace to society,” Osamu says, but it comes out sounding a little more like _I love you_. 

Suna smiles and lifts his chin to catch Osamu’s mouth in a kiss, soft and sweet, and it kind of feels like he’s saying _you better_.)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading and thank you in advance for any comments/kudos! they really make my day!
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://youichi-kuramochi.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/kura_ryous)!


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